Fun with NULL pointers, part 1 [LWN.net]

Fun with NULL pointers, part 1

Posted Jul 21, 2009 12:52 UTC (Tue) by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454)
In reply to: Fun with NULL pointers, part 1 by nix
Parent article: Fun with NULL pointers, part 1

> We really need an awk for XML.

Just use xsltproc directly (though not having to use a detached xslt file would be nice)

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Fun with NULL pointers, part 1

Posted Jul 22, 2009 22:00 UTC (Wed) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

Ew, no. Utterly un-awklike and doing awk-like transformations with XSLT is
really quite painful. (And yes, you can do awklike languages for things
other than text streams: see gvpr(1) for example.)

(One of many problems is XSLT's heavy use of <>, which makes it very
annoying to use from the shell prompt. Another is its astonishing
verbosity. Another is its total lack of good taste in design... also the
functional nature of it, while one of its nicer aspects, fits very badly
with the shell in my experience.)